Proliferation of smart phones, and their subsequent use to perform high data-rate communications, has resulted in an exponential growth in the volume of data flowing over wireless networks. The increased volume of data flowing over the networks is taxing the service providers and the network infrastructure responsible for ensuring the data flows at acceptable rates for most, if not all, users. If unchecked, a small population of users of the wireless networks, consumers of excessive portions of the available wireless network bandwidth would degrade quality of service for all users. Such abuse of wireless networks, or at least the threat of such abuse, has led service providers to restrict the amount of data bits communicated by individual users' wireless devices over a specified of period of time (e.g., a month) for a given subscriber agreement.
A consequence of the phenomenon of greatly expanded data flow, and the resulting imposition of necessary use limits on subscribers that exceed reasonable use limitations based upon their subscription agreement, is the emergence of large numbers of subscribers that violate, perhaps innocently, the terms of service of their subscriptions. Identifying violators and limiting their data usage is implemented in known systems by a policy server closely integrated with data transmission within a mobile network and potentially introducing unacceptable bottle necks, increased data transmission overhead and delays.